Spadework for a Palace

Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle " Entering the Madness of Others" and offers an epigraph: " Reality is no obstacle." Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles, fueled by the idees fixe of a " gray little librarian" with fallen arches whose name-mr herman melvill-is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (" I too resided on East 26th Street . . . I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office"), which itself is just one aspect of his also being " constantly conscious of his connectedness" to Lebbeus Woods, to the rock that is Manhattan, to the " drunkard Lowry" and his Lunar Caustic, to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville, but also tracing the paths to " a Serene Paradise of Knowledge." Driven to save that Palace (a higher library he also serves), he loses his job and his wife leaves him, but " people must be told the truth: there is no dualism in existence." And his dream will be " realized, for I am not giving up: I am merely a day-laborer, a spade-worker on this dream, a herman melvill, a librarian from the lending desk, currently an inmate at Bellevue, but at the same time-may I say this?-actually a Keeper of the Palace."